10 Jaw Dropping Traditions From Around The World

There are traditions many us are accustomed to, traditions like Christmas, having a Bar/Bat Mitzvah or getting paddled during initiation by your fraternity brothers. Other cultures participate in rituals just a little more intense than our own.

1. Man Down Russian Drinking Game

Via live-travel-blog.com

In Russia, it's a traditional drinking game for men together and prepare a bottle of vodka for every three men. They drink until one falls, or passes out, and refusing to drink is considered an insult to those participating. To nostrovia! To alcohol poisoning!

2. Baby Tossing

Via vagabondish.com

In Maharashtra state of India, it is common practice to toss newborn babies off the side of a 15 meter temple. According to tradition, this gives the children good luck into their adult years and strengthens intelligence. Or a fear of falling off tall buildings. Either way.

3. Carrying pregnant women over coal

Via traditionscustoms.com

According to Chinese customs, a husband should carry his bride over a pan of burning coals when entering their home for the first time. This myth has been performed to ensure she will have an easy, successful labor. This is where you insert a joke about men finally understanding the pain of childbirth, or something.

4. Living with the Dead

Via top-10-list.org

It's common practice in Indonesia for families to wrap the deceased up in special garbs and keep it in the house. It's thought that in doing so, the loved one's soul will be preserved until burial. I guess it's better than having your in-laws over for the holiday weekends-ammirite? ZING.

5. Tibetan Sky Burial

Via vagabondish.com

This is a funerary practice in Tibet in which the deceased's body is incised in various places and laid on a mountaintop where it can be exposed to the natural elements and animals. The ritual signified the fleetingness of life and considered a generous act because it provides food for animals just like animals do for people.

6. Kanamara Matsuri

Via loneleeplanet.com

Basically, it's a penis festival. This japanese tradition celebrates fertility by holding phallic-themed parades and celebrations. On March 15th every year a giant wooden penis is hoisted into the air and marched across town to bring about regenerative abilities on the local crops, and to ensure fertility for everyone. WHOOP-EE fun for the whole family!

7. Indonesian Walking Dead

Via extraordinaryintelligence.com

This is for real, guys. Funerals can be both pricey and intricate ceremonies and in Torajah the afterlife is an important part of their religious beliefs. When families can't afford an initial proper burial, a body is placed in a temporary coffin. When funding is in order, the corpse is literally RAISED FROM THE DEAD and "walks" to it's new resting place. This gives AMC's "Walking Dead" a run for it's money, don't ya think? (Womp, womp.)

8. Kidnap the Bride

Via weirdworm.com

This is as illegal as it sounds. The Romani (gypsies) have carried out this insanely criminal wedding tradition for centuries. It basically entails if a person can successfully kidnap and keep hostage a girl and get her to stay for 3-5 days, you guys can become the most dysfunctional stockholmie couple ever. Originally it made sense because it meant you didn't have to pay off the bride's parents and now it's considered true love at first chloroform.

9. Bullet Ants Coming of Age Ritual

In the Amazon, becoming an doesn't mean celebrating the first sight of hair on your nether regions. For the Satere-Mawe tribe in Brazil, it means sticking your hands into gloves filled with BULLET ANTS for eleven hours. Now, if you don't know what a bullet ant is, let us inform you. Bullet ants, or Paraponera, have a Schmidt Sting Pain Index of ONE. That's the highest ratings, guys. The name is awarded appropriately given their stings are compared to being shot with bullets. If that's what becoming a man entails, then I know no men.

10. Yanomamo Ash Eating

Via itthing.com

The Yanomamo tribe of Venezuela and Brazil forbids in preserving or keeping any parts of their deceased. Instead, the body is cremated and the ashes, which includes crushed bones, are given to the family to be eaten. And, yup, that's about it.